There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
And that’s how Nicole Williams and the rest of the city’s steadily rising number of unemployed feel.
The official decline in the city’s unemployment rate, to 8.8 percent in October from 9.1 percent a year ago, isn’t a recovery for a huge number of residents like Williams, 36.
“I can’t believe it, it’s amazing,” Williams, recently laid off as a customer-service rep in a corporate cutback at Time Warner, told The Post.
“I hear and see the unemployment stats on TV. But when you go to the food pantry and actually see all these people lining up, you say to yourself, ‘Oh my gosh, these are real people with real issues.’”
The East Harlem mother of four is one of them. She’s supplementing her unemployment benefits with food from the Yorkville Common Pantry, a charity on East 109th Street.
And she’s not the only struggling New Yorker who is unemployed, marginally employed or has stopped looking for work in frustration — and can’t make ends meet without help.
Williams is a single mom and pays $745 monthly in rent. “It is very sad. There is nothing I can do except keep praying and know it is going to get better,” she said.
The government’s latest statistics show what Williams and the others at the food pantry face:
* New York’s poverty rate last year rose to 20.9 percent, from 20.1 percent a year earlier.
* 1.7 million New Yorkers last year were classified as “poor,” living on less than $18,530 a year for a family of three.
* About 750,000 are scraping by on less than half the poverty income.
* Food-stamp recipients jumped from 19.3 percent to 20.6 percent of New Yorkers in the last year.
“This year, visits to soup kitchens and food pantries rival the sustained high rates that were reported last year,” said Kate MacKenzie, director of policy and government relations for City Harvest.
This is the New York nonprofit that freely delivers a staggering 42 million pounds of “excess” food annually from restaurants and other sources to 600 city community food programs, including the Yorkville pantry.
Last year, City Harvest reported a 77 percent increase in visits to local food programs over 2008 levels.
Hunger-relief agencies saw a 35 percent increase in visits by children over last year.
Seniors needing emergency food jumped by 26 percent.
As of June 2012, people served by Staten Island food agencies grew year over year by 24 percent from 2011. Brooklyn saw a rise of 4 percent.
“The food pantry is my haven,” said Williams. “When I was working, I donated to organizations like Catholic Charities. Now I am on the other side.”
The decline in unemployment by 0.8 percent last month (unadjusted) from September is sugarcoated by a surge in low-paid employment.
The Fiscal Policy Institute in New York estimates that 130,000 low-wage jobs were created in New York City since the mid- 2008 recession. Many highly paid private-sector jobs disappeared. The independent think tank said that New York City has endured an unemployment rate of about 8 percent or higher for the past three and a half years — the longest such run since the mid-1970s.
“Having almost entirely ended hunger in New York and America in the late 1970s, it is increasing again. It started to skyrocket starting in 2008,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which represents soup kitchens and food pantries and 1.5 million low-income New Yorkers.
What’s behind so much hunger, Berg told The Post: “A lack of jobs and living wages.”
Andrea, a single mother of five from Queens, says she’s also struggling — with rising food prices. Despite a full-time nursing job that pays $42,000 annually, she relies on visits to the local food pantry to help offset the costs of items like clothes and school supplies.
She pays $1,375 for her two-bedroom apartment. “I have to live within my budget,” said Andrea, who declined to give her last name.
Berg is not encouraged by the recent elections. “People who were elected and re-elected have committed to doing something seriously about this problem, and will now be empowered,” he said.
“But I am not particularly hopeful.”
(Angel Chevrestt)